The State - News from Jan. 14, 1987

Army officials acknowledged that the United States made 5,000 bombs to drop deadly anthrax spores on Germany in World War II, but disputed a historian’s claim that the bombs were loaded and shipped to England. The bombs were made in Indiana in the final days of the war, but the anthrax was stored at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., and never put in them, said Norman Covert, chief of public affairs at the base. None of the bombs was sent to England, he said. Covert’s account is contrary to evidence Stanford history professor Barton J. Bernstein said he found in declassified files in London and reported last week in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. A memo to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill from the head of Churchill’s secret committee on bacteriological warfare stated that the first batch of 5,000 U.S.-made bombs were shipped to Britain and were ready for testing, Bernstein said.